HIS LIFE AND WORK 



When McCormick was a boy, more wheat was 

 raised in Virginia than in any other State. But 

 by 1860 Illinois was ahead, and by degrees the 

 sceptre of the wheat empire passed westwards, 

 until to-day it is held by Minnesota. What with 

 the Homestead Act of 1862, and the offer of 

 McCormick and the other Reaper manufacturers 

 to sell machines to the farmers on credit, it was 

 possible for poor men, without capital, to be- 

 come each the owner of 160 acres of land, and 

 to harvest its grain without spending a penny 

 in wages. Thus the immense area of the West 

 became a populous country, with cities and 

 railways and State Governments, and producing 

 one-tenth of the wheat of the world. 



The enterprise of these Western farmers 

 brought in the present era of farm machinery. 

 It replaced "the man with the hoe" by the man 

 with the self-binder and steel plow and steam 

 thresher. It wiped out the old-time drudge of 

 the soil from American farms, and put in his 

 stead the new farmer, the business farmer, who 

 works for a good living and a profit, and not for 

 a bare existence. Such men as Oliver Dalrym- 



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